Will not power on after complete battery drain

I will try and keep this question short.

Before leaving for vacation I unplugged my power cord to protect from lightning or other power fluctuations. After returning I promptly plugged my computer in and waited for the battery to recharge. Unfortunately my computer will not turn on after charging the battery, resetting the NVRAM, SMB, etc.

I was using the computer just before leaving so physical damage is ruled out. The irony of killing my computer while trying to protect it pains me. It was such a good machine, well taken care of.

If it is even relevant, I forgot to do a shutdown and it was forced to deep sleep.

I have this exact problem, with this exact model (MacBook 5,1 - late 2008). I assume my logic board is fried but the timing is odd, since I left it unplugged so I don't see how that would have happened.

4 Soluções

So after trying everything on the internet to fix the problem, my computer "magically" fixed itself. I will outline what I was doing that woke up my computer out of its deep sleep.

1. Repeated the steps of removing the power adapter, removing the battery, holding the power button for 5 seconds, and reinserting the power adapter. I forgot the name of this reset but it is the one that pertains to power states.

2. Nothing happened. I desperately repeater this multiple times and finally decided to give it a try with the battery reinstalled. IT WORKED!

SUGGESTION: This is purely anecdotal but I believe putting the once completely drained battery through a couple recharge cycles may allow it to re-calibrate itself.

NOTE: My best guess at what changed from the dozens other attempts is that my battery was now drained down to approximately 15-20%. Out of frustration I believe I must have previously left things unplugged. Being drained and then charged a little may have allowed the battery's controller to discover that it is indeed not dead and safe to use, thereby signally to the computer that it is okay to resume from sleep, I don't know?

(Chris Kessler who wrote this has been right on for me forever about the strangest issues)

''Unfortunately it appears that some systems may have troubles with hibernation mode, so if you are finding your Mac unable to wake from sleep, then are three potential fixes you can try:

Turn off system hibernation

Since hibernation mode’s only real benefit is to allow you to resume from sleep in the face of a power loss, a simple solution may be to turn hibernation mode off by running the following two commands in the OS X Terminal (enter your password when prompted–it will not show):

sudo pmset standby 0

sudo pmset autopoweroff 0

These commands will turn off the hardware settings that will put your Mac into hibernation mode. The first is Apple’s main standby mode option, and the second is an implementation required for European energy regulations. To reverse these commands, you can again either reset your Mac’s system management controller, or re-run the commands but use “1” as the value instead of “0.”

Disable and re-enable FileVault

The writing and restoring of memory contents from disk may conflict with FileVault or other full disk encryption routines. Technically when waking from hibernate mode the system should allow you to authenticate and then load the contents of the hibernation file, but if a bug prevents this from happening, then your Mac may not be able to load the hibernation file, and could hang.

To hopefully overcome this, first try disabling your full-disk encryption routines. After your disk is fully decrypted (this may take a while) test hibernate mode to see if it works properly, and then re-enable disk encryption and test again.

Remove your the system’s hibernation file

A final approach you can try is to remove the system’s hibernation file, which is the hidden file that is written to whenever your Mac goes into hibernation mode. While the system will recreate this file if it is missing, if present then it will just write to the existing file. As a result, any damage to this file may prevent the system from reading it when waking from sleep. To fix this, you can force OS X to recreate it by deleting it, which can be done by running the following command in the Terminal:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Again supply your password when prompted, and then see if hibernate mode works properly.''

Could you please provide some context for your assertion? How can you be confident it is the battery when the indicator lights show that it is full. Moreover, I believe I used to power my laptop without the battery installed and now that no longer works. Sincere thanks!

Since the SMC is dead and/or at the very least needs to be re-set (this controls those little green lights) there's no verifying the battery indication as to power.

Likely your battery will live to see another couple hundred cycles. The fact that your machine doesn't switch over to shore power (without the battery in) is further verification of the trouble area. Before you get yourself all worked up and do any damage, take it to an Apple store and let them test the battery and the unit for free. They run into this all the time and it's a known defect in your model running the newer OS-X operating system.